Natalie pointed my attention to the link of the North American Support team. I have "stolen" some content to put on my blog (sorry .. and thanks, guys :)).

Furthermore, wito noticed some issues in the 5.0 updates. I order my table on build no (afaik, this is the logical order - the latest build is the latest update). This was not entirely correct on the 5.0 hot fixes. I redid it and now it should be OK. I used italic to point out what I've changed.

The text in italic means that that peace was added or changed since last table-update.

To conclude a little message. On Friday, I'm going on holiday for two weeks (first time in two years ... so I have been looking forward to it ). Going to spend some quality time with the family. That means my blog is going on vacation as well .

On the 15th of May, we had our first "real" information evening organised by the Belgian Dynamics Community. And an interesting one! Something a lot of consultants within the NAV community in Belgium (and I guess not only in Belgium) was asking or waiting for. A meeting with the team within Microsoft which are responsible for the localized functionality of Microsoft Dynamics NAV. Big applause to Microsoft Belgium (An Van Gysel) for this opportunity.

We hosted this event at Tradiplan. A special thanks to Rodrigue Dion. He managed to get us this very nice looking location for this evening.

During the evening, I decided to write some kind of "summary" for my blog. Actually, for me, the most challenging thing to write this blog post was "typing as quiet as possible" .. people were listening so intensely that everyone could hear me typing (sorry guys - *** juttu!). Also, for me it's always a challenge to write about functionality, being a technical "nerd" myself... .

Anyway ... Let's go ...

Who is GDL?

Global Development Localization

. The team within Microsoft that tries to implement the "legal" requirements for a country, with the goal that everyone within that country can do the legal reporting out-of-the-box with the product.

The GDL team has got 4 pillars:

In-country: Program Management

Regional hubs: development

Regional hubs: testing

Regional hubs: documentation

With "In-Country" I mean that there is a "team" available per localized country within the country. With "Regional hubs" I mean that one hub is responsible for multiple countries / localizations.

Furthermore, if we're talking about localisation, then we're talking about development of features (legal requirements) as well as translation in the language(s) of that country.

Then, An started talking about the "GDL Virtual Team", which she explained by an example. How does it go?

Program manager in the country gets an alert (by PAM, Partner, governement, whoever...)

We saw on the graph that Belgium is (besides Italy) the most "busy" country on that ... Mosts CDCR's of all countries in Europe, so most legal changes.

I'm not going to bore you with all the new upcoming functionalities (actually, I would like to, but I missed some of them by talking to my neighbour ), but one of them was definitely interesting: IBS6. OK, probably only in Belgium, but integration with Isabel right from NAV (as long as the client of isabel is open) sounds nice, doesn't it?

Also SEPA is coming. SEPA = Single Euro Payments Area. So, the GDL team is working to integrate this in NAV as well. If you would like to know more about SEPA ... Google it . All I can say is that the ultimate objectives are:

A euro area in which all payments are domestic;

Within the SEPA, customers will be able to make cross-border payments as efficiently and safely as is the case with domestic payments today;

If they so wish, using a single payment account and a single card;

Foster competition on EU-level to reduce processing times and costs;

Deciding not to write too much about SEPA got me quite some "free" time. Didn't know she would go so deep into it. Anyway, it was interesting to see the roadmap (wishlist and reality) and the impact of a big feature like this.

Last I noted down of what is going to be added - or should I say removed - in Belgium: the"disk" declaration option of VAT-VIES ... have to be removed. From 01/01/09 this is not allowed anymore.

Next very important point on the agenda was ... How can we (the community) influence this? A new "group" will be created by the community and Microsoft, called "Parnter Advisory Council" - PAC if you will.

What is the purpose?

To have a forum where the GDL team can talk to partners under a NDA discussing:

Legal requirements;

Market requirements - help to prioritize market needs to build more competitive features;

Most important improvement to be done per product (to increase CPE, to increase our win rate);

Analysis of using existing functionality

(do partners use standard localization feature or they develop their own add-ons)

Discussing not only "what", but also "How". Suggest optimal solutions for problems

To gain quantifiable evidence to support or disprove the current findings;

To gain a strong relationship with key partners accross the market

Feedback!!

All this in the format of a round table. An open line discussion, one or two times a year, per product. It will only be a small group of Dynamics Product Specialists. No sales, no marketing ... But skilled consultants!

I can only say: waw! This is a great initiative. This means the people that knows best will be involved and can give input to this.

A great opportunity for us to conclude the session with. Good job, folks!

There was quite a discussion going on what could be discussed and what not on forums. Why?

CTP3 is made available for partners, and partners only. And everyone have to keep in mind that all partners have signed an NDA (non-disclosure agreement). This has a consequence to sharing stuff ... you're not allowed to .

Now, the NDA restrictions are not always very clear. Therefore, for this CTP3, Ilana Smith from Microsoft has put a post online to make the NDA restrictions in case of the CTP3 more clear to us:

I was asked to clarify the current NDA situation regarding CTP3, which is available for download on PartnerSource. I'm hardly the best person for this, as I'm in development, so I'll just quote the information sent to me by Michael Rosenørn (who is in our Global Product Managment group):

Quote:

"We have had several questions in regards to how much or how little can be shared with customers around NAV 2009. The message is quite clear – as it is stated on the site for the technical preview – this is partner confidential and the purpose of the Technical Preview is to help you (- the partner) get ready. We will release a marketing VPC by the end of September 2008. By then it will be time to show the solution to your customers and prospects. Until then please be aware of the confidentiality clause which prevents you from sharing any of the content with customers or other external third parties.

So all NDAs that you have signed as a partner or a mvp are in full effect. If you need to share anything there is a customer ready version of the Statement of Direction will give the customer a good idea of where we are heading . . . "

These means you're welcome to discuss NAV 2009 information that is publicly available, but please don't talk about stuff you have privileged access to.

NAV 2009 is a bold step for the product and there's obviously lots to discuss, but hopefully you can understand that, at this point, access to information about the product has to be carefully managed. It's important that partners have a chance to ramp up on the product prior to wider availability.

From a dev team perspective, we love getting feedback, positive or negative. (I prefer negative, it's more useful...) We've heard a lot from the partners who are part of our early access programs, and look forward to hearing even more in the future...

Pasted from <http://www.mibuso.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=25606&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=30&sid=912894052677c27b773cf1e184ff8103>

Now, not all partners are part of the Beta Access Program ... and definitely not of the TAP program. So how to give feedback? Here is your answer: just send your feedback tonavctp3@microsoft.com. And don't tell them how good it is, but tell them how bad it is.

The updates keep on coming ... so we keep updating. If it continues with this tempo, we'll have quite a table in a year :(. I also added an rss-feed link which might be convenient for you guys to keep track of all knowledge base articles.

In a conference like Direcionts EMEA, I noticed again how interested people can be in sometimes such a simple solution. In our company, we implement every installation with a default set of tools (enhancements). One of these tools is a very simple and little something called "Database Info"-form.

The goal is to differentiate what kind of database you logged in: Test Database, a Test Company, a Development Database, ... . Actually, you just want a visual difference between two environments. In the old days (version 3.X and less), we had a menu, which we could give a certain color, caption or whatever. Now, we don't have a form that pops up, so no form we can modify. I present to you a little solution that might be able to help you with this, and the end result looks like this:

The red area, just right from the menu suite, is the "solution" I'm talking about - in case it was not clear . To accomplish the main idea, there are only three things you have to do:

Create a form with these properties:

Borderstyle: None

CaptionBar: None

Mimizable: No

Maximizable: No

Sizeable: No

Editable: No

Xpos: 0

Ypos: 0

You put some descriptions on the form with captions.

In CodeUnit 1 in Trigger "CompanyOpen" you call the form like:

IF GUIALLOWED THEN FORM.RUN(FORM::"Database Info");

That's basically all. Easy, isn't it?

But let's make it somewhat more useful and generic. Let's put some info on the form, work with colors and make that configurable ... So that the result is somewhat more like above:

Create a setup table with these fields:

Primary Key (Code)

Show Database info Form (Boolean): use this field to be able to switch off the use of the form.

Title (Text): Will be shown on the form.

Color (Option): The color of the form to make it even more "visible". I have chosen to make it simple. Just a fixed number of colors with an option field. You could make this with a color picker, but hey, we're not creating a business critical form here, are we ?

Modify codeunit 1, change your already added code to:

CLEAR(recDatabaseInfoSetup); IF recDatabaseInfoSetup.GET THEN IF recDatabaseInfoSetup."Show Database Info Form" THEN IF GUIALLOWED THEN FORM.RUN(FORM::"Database Info");

Modify the form like this:

The main idea is to "generate" the form when we are opening it. We'll set the colors, fill in the fields, make the form the right size and put it in it's place. Actually, the design on the form might even look like this (it doesn't matter):

To make the colors work:

For all colors in your option field, create a shape and put it somewhere on your form. Also, give a name to your shapes (preferably the color names to make the code more readable);